Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration Form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement .
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration Form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Asian Pacific Americans is both an historical survey of the waves of immigration and settlement of Asian Pacific peoples in the United States from the 19th century to the present and a sampling of literary works that deal with their problems of identity, adjustment and assimilation. Through an anthology of readings as well as individual selections of fiction, the student is introduced to the feelings and thoughts of Asian Pacific ethnic groups whose numbers are rapidly increasing in American society.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

An interdisciplinary study of the indigenous peoples of the United States. Students will explore individual native cultures and the mythological worlds that have informed them, historical developments in U.S. Indian policy and their ideological foundations, and the origins of Native American stereotypes in American culture as seen in art, literature, music and film. Native perspectives will be emphasized throughout the course using autobiography, oral history, political essays and art.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course studies the American comic strip and comic book, and will consider these forms in both aesthetic and historical/cultural contexts. The course will attempt to uncover the aesthetic principles of the comics. In this regard, comics will be treated like any artistic work. The course will also consider comics as reflections of the culture which produced them. Since their emergence in the 1930s, comic books have been attacked by educators, librarians, and parents. These public outcries and the comics themselves serve as unique entry points into the American psyche. In the 30s and 40s protesters argued that comics harmed children's eyesight and kept them from "real" literature. In the 1950s, comics were vilified as leading to juvenile delinquency. In the 1960s so called "underground comix" glorified the burgeoning drug culture. The course will look at these comics, as well as the newspaper editorials, senate reports, and psychological studies that followed them. By examining what children were reading and what parents tried to keep children from reading, the course will try to learn something about what America was at these periods and what America wished to be. Comics' emergence as a uniquely American art form is a window into America itself.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This introductory American studies course examines what it means to be an American from a variety of social, political, and historical perspectives. Arranged chronologically and moving from Puritan New England to our current post-9/11 moment, the course takes up a series of topics that have been central to American cultural understanding and to the field of American studies, including war, revolution, law, immigration, and the frontier. Students will use a range of primary sources to consider these topics, including fiction, photographs, material objects, and film. As they learn how to practice the interdisciplinary method of American studies, they will also learn about the history of the field, using key secondary readings to understand the different critical approaches that have dominated the field since its inception.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Focusing on the North American continent and especially that part which became the United States, The American Environment focuses on two major themes: (1)the interaction of human beings and the natural world, and (2) the interaction between the political structure of the United States with issues of the natural environment. The course examines the land itself along with art, literature, material culture, and historic sites with a goal of answering questions about the role of the natural world in the creation of America. At the same time it asks how the environment became such a key idea and focus of government at all levels, and how environmental policy has been created over time. A major question is how the environment creates the state and how the state creates environmental policy. A major case study illustrating this will be how a state like New Jersey creates its water supply system and how federal policy influences it over time. Other topics include the creation of the Department of Environmental Protection and the creation of parks at every level of government and how all of this reflects a lengthy historical process of Americans coming to grips with what was once simply "nature" and what is now "the environment." Beginning with America before 1492, the course traces the history of the human relationship with the environment, how humans have thought about the natural world, and how that relationship and thinking have changed over time. It examines the many transformations--cultural, intellectual/religious, economic, political and technological--that have given rise to the era when environmental concerns have emerged as critical. Students will examine some of the classic environmental thinkers such as Alexander von Humboldt, George Perkins Marsh, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and Gifford Pinchot along with the constitutional and legal basis of environmental policy. At least one field trip will be arranged. Traditional approaches to American life have tended to take the natural environment for granted while concentrating almost solely upon human activity. The American Environment attempts to take notice of the natural world as a central fact of all human activity--as both the setting for and the receiver of whatever humans do; not merely the stage, it is a major actor in the grand drama of human experience, a central force in every aspect of life and one that is ignored at the peril of distorting our understanding.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course evaluates various definitions and cultural expressions of American empire beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the present day. We will discuss U.S. foreign relations and the changing field of global politics by analyzing these developments through a variety of analytical lenses. This journey will involve different ideas about political purpose and ethical responsibility around America's place in the world as envisioned by policy makers, activists, intellectuals, and cultural producers. Underlying our conversations will be how categories like race, gender, class, and religion relate to ideas about democracy, modernity, and intervention, as well as aesthetic qualities concerning cultural value. Our focus will be on a smattering of cultural forms--such as film, music, literature, and protest movements--that have illustrated the contentious debates over American nationalism and imperial desire in the modern era.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

An assessment of the unique experience and contributions of African Americans to politics, religion, the arts, science, and history. The course will identify and analyze selected myths, issues, and challenges faced daily by African Americans in their struggle for dignity, self-determination, and justice.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

The American Dream has long been a central feature of America's cultural understanding. For generations, Americans old and new have held fast to the belief that this is the land of opportunity, that upward mobility is available to everyone, and that hard work, ability, and maybe a little luck are all that are needed to achieve material success. This course focuses on the American Dream as expressed in literature, but it seeks to combine a literary approach with historical, art historical, and other approaches to the subject. Along the way we will gain insight into crucial questions for today: What are some of the constraints faced by people seeking to make better lives for themselves? Can we envision a society in which success and personal fulfillment are available to all?
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 5.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 5.000 Lecture hours

What is going on inside contemporary America? In New England? In California? In the rural heartland? The central concern of this course is the politics, economics, and social life of the American states and regions. The states are the building blocks of American federalism and are significant policy-making arenas. Students will write a significant term paper and participate in a seminar-like format. Special attention will be devoted to the domestic impact of the changing global order and the politics of economic growth versus environmental protection.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This class investigates multiple expressions of American radicalism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Bearing in mind changing definitions of dominance and resistance in distinct eras of leftwing activism, we will assess the historical relationship between aesthetics and ideology in oppositional art and social movements. By addressing themes like racism and sexism, economic inequality and homophobia, we will endeavor to answer questions such as the following: Why are figures like Malcolm X, Ana Castillo, Public Enemy, and Emma Goldman considered radical? What makes art, literature, or music vehicles for American dissent locally and globally.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Technology has had a profound influence on the formation of modern American culture. This course explores the different, and often contested, meanings technology has had for people living between the dawn of the industrial age and the present. The course draws on a variety of sources, including fiction, poetry, painting, and photography.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

An examination of the Holocaust as viewed by the media. Over the last 20 years, films and television have increasingly dealt with the Holocaust and other genocides. This course will study the Holocaust, its place in history, and its impact on contemporary life and culture as represented in the media. Within this context, it will delve into the relationship between "Hollywood" and the global cinema.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course introduces students to the history of United States foreign relations toward nations and entities in sub-Saharan Africa and its Diaspora--the Caribbean and Latin America. It will focus on the historical reasoning behind the decision-making of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa and its Diaspora. Policies toward African nations in the past were influenced by the Monroe Doctrine, social issues such as race and gender, the Big Stick and Dollar Diplomacy, the Good Neighbor Policy, the Cold War and national security, the presence of the United Nations, the African American struggle for civil and human rights, and college student movements. The course will begin with the 1821 United States establishment of Liberia, address U.S. imperial aspirations in the Caribbean at the turn of the 20th century, and culminate with the 1980s student movements that agitated for U.S. corporations to divest from South Africa. Moreover, time will be allotted in the last portion of the course to address recent U.S. foreign policy issues toward Africa and its Diaspora.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Photography has become a central means to convey information and attempt to influence people since its invention in 1839. Photography is a subset of visual culture, the interdisciplinary study of images and objects, their formation and historical and theoretical contexts. Images have come to dominate our lives. Learning different approaches to their interpretation and examining their use in American culture will be our objective. This is an American Studies course, and thus interdisciplinary in nature. The course combines history, art history, literature, and culture studies to develop an in-depth understanding of how photographic and other visual images can be "read" and how they are used to a multiplicity of purposes. We will examine "the cultural work that images do" (Davidov) and how images create visual paradigms in American culture and, indeed, have "written" America's history and identity (but often as fiction). Issues of race, class and gender in visual culture will shape our readings, class discussions, and assignments, and we will range among popular, elite and academic culture. In addition to using slides and the images from our texts, we will visit virtual museums and other virtual resources to access images.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course is an upper-division exploration of the American suburban landscape as it manifests in American culture, politics, commerce, and art. Topics within include the pathologies of suburbia as well as its strengths, and suburban phenomena are seen through the lenses of literature, voting patterns, environmentalism, race and ethnicity, and mobility.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course will focus on the formation and elaboration of class identities in America from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 20th century. We will explore a number of topics, including the different conceptions of class relations, the rise and fall of working-class radicalism, ideals of class mobility, the expansive nature of the middle class, and the ways in which race, class, and gender have been inextricably linked. The materials for the course will include a number of primary documents -- including novels, short stories, photographs, and paintings -- as well as a selection of recent secondary works. The course will conclude with a study of contemporary issues of class in America.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

For most of the 20th century, "hard-boiled" crime fiction and Film Noir have had a pervasive influence on American fiction, film, and culture. This course will explore the significance and transformations of Noir by looking at hard-boiled fiction and film. This class will consider, among other things, the roles power, class, race, and gender play in these texts. We will read works by Modern- and Post-modern authors like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, William Faulkner, James Cain, Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, Patricia Highsmith, William Moncure March, Walter Mosely, James Ellroy, and Paul Auster. We will watch and discuss films like THE MALTESE FALCON, WHITE HEAT, KISS ME DEADLY, A TOUCH OF EVIL, and PULP FICTION. Some films will be screened in class, but most will be left on library reserve for independent viewing.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course will examine how writers and artists in the United States defined and took great interest in distinctive American regions during the period roughly from the end of the Civil War through the 1920s. The course will focus on American regional fiction, placing that fiction in a broader historical context and considering it alongside photographs, prints, and paintings. Along the way, we will read recent critical analyses of American literary regionalism, in order to understand how scholars have treated the authors and subjects taken up in the course. Among the authors we will read are Bret Harte, Maurice Thompson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Thomas Nelson Page, Charles Chesnutt and Sherwood Anderson. More broadly, we will consider how literature can both reflect and produce social and cultural priorities, and how regionalism and globalism--expressed both artistically and politically--have gone hand in hand in America.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

The descriptions and topics of this course change from semester-to-semester, as well as from instructor-to-instructor. Prerequisite: varies with the topic offered.
AMER 390 LOUISIANA: CULTURE AND HISTORY. Ever since 1803, Louisiana has been a case study of how closely the United States is linked to cultures and countries around the globe. While Louisiana is often famous for its "creole" cooking and culture, any attempt to define the word "creole" immediately shows how complex Louisiana history and culture truly are. Often considered the "birthplace of jazz," Louisiana is also home to other unique musical traditions, including Cajun and Zydeco music produced by the Cajuns (descendants of the Acadians from Canada) and the Afro-Creoles/Creoles of Color. In this course, we will study the history of Louisiana and some of its distinct cultural contributions. We will read historical and literary texts, and watch movies that help to contextualize some of this material. Throughout the semester, we will take special care to consider the influences of other nations and cultures on Louisiana as we explore its unique place in these United States.
AMER 390 AMERICAN HOLIDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS. Holidays and ritual celebrations have been an integral aspect of American culture. How Americans have celebrated holidays and the very holidays we observe have changed dramatically over time. This course examines how Americans have observed holidays and what these celebrations reveal about American social life. A close examination of holidays gives us a window into understanding larger currents in American society. We will look at how American holidays have evolved, what their potential roots are in other cultures, and how they are often contested terrain between groups of Americans from different races, classes, ethnic groups, genders, and age cohorts.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration Form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Internships are available at a wide variety of historical sites located within commuting distance of the Ramapo College campus, including the Hermitage, Ringwood Manor, the American Labor Museum of Paterson and Historic Hudson Valley. Students will engage in archival research, educational program planning and the development and implementation of museum exhibits.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

The American Studies Seminar serves as a "capstone course" for students completing the American studies major. The topics and descriptions vary according to the instructor, but each course will have students focusing on a specific topic, reading and discussing important secondary studies on that topic, and engaging in their own interdisciplinary study using a variety of primary and secondary sources. The course culminates in a substantial reserach project that gives students a chance to synthesize and advance work as American studies scholars.
AMERICAN HISTORY, AMERICAN VISUAL CULTURE: examines American history from the perspective of visual culture. Arranged chronologically, the course considers the many ways in which social and political issues in America have been framed and debated in visual terms. The course will range across a variety of visual sources--including paintings, prints, photographs, and film--and will culminate in a substantial research project. The selected readings will engage students with central issues in the field of visual culture studies, and with important recent works in American visual culture.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours